The Power to Persevere: How One City Is Rebuilding Itself Through Biomass

BERLIN, N.H. --
Drive deep enough into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and you'll be on your way. Continue far enough past the ski resorts that make the region famous, and you'll head straight for some of the most rugged peaks in North America. Stay close enough to the unforgiving Androscoggin River, and you'll soon see the sign.

"Welcome to Berlin, New Hampshire: The City That Trees Built.”

It’s then that you’ll realize that this struggling city doesn’t take failure easily. And giving up? It’s just not the way they do business.

So when the city set out on a course to rebuild itself, it once again turned to the dense forests that long ago defined this community. For the 10,000 residents of Berlin, the cornerstone of the revitalization is a 75-megawatt biomass power plant that will by 2013 sprout from the ashes of the city’s historic paper mill.

Yes, it is renewable energy. But it has always been about more than that. It’s about jobs — 400 during the two years of construction, 40 permanent positions at the plant itself once it opens and about 200 more year-round to supply the wood needed to generate power. It’s also about the tax base that will grow because of this deal. Cate Street Capital’s $275 million project will bring to the region an estimated $40 million in annual wages, fuel procurement and purchased goods. And over the life of the project, the Burgess Biopower Plant will pay Berlin $34 million in new property taxes as well as $9 to $10 million in the sale of renewable energy credits.

To those involved, this was always about more than deal-making and financing. This project was different than most from the start. Usually, large-scale developments start with a big idea, and they slowly, if ever, work their way to the highest levels of government. In Berlin, state leaders — from the economic commissioner to the head of the state’s dominant utility to the governor himself — saw the potential for the plant. They understood it was a project that could lift a town. They believed it was an industry that could replace the now-defunct paper mills. And they saw it as the vehicle that would return Berlin to its heyday.

Yet, they also knew they were in for a fight.

In the beginning

To understand Berlin, you must first understand the intersection of small towns and big industries.

The solitary smokestack visible from the heart of downtown is today viewed as a relic of the city’s history. The close-knit neighborhoods, the churches, the schools, the baseball field — they all grew up in the shadow of that boiler. In many ways, they were there because of that boiler.

Today, the property has been picked clean, its buildings and industrial machinery sold as scraps. But the boiler and smokestack remain, thanks to people like Carl Belanger, a longtime superintendent of the boiler who understood its importance to the town, and its ability to help it forge a new identity.

Mills have been at the site on Community Street since the 1850s. The original paper mill drew other paper mills, which eventually attracted a railroad, which brought immigrants from all over the world eager to find work in the burgeoning area. Mostly, the new workers moved south from Quebec, bringing with them their French language and strong work ethic. By 1930, the town had more than 20,000 residents, thousands of which were employed directly at the mills. The rest of the town owed its existence to the thriving paper industry.

Decades later, though, the town began its long, slow decline. Mills shut down, residents were laid off, workers and their families moved on. By 2006, Community Street was empty for the first time in more than 150 years. Berlin’s economy was depressed and the city was in need of a new strategy.

If a city, township or structured community prohibits use of toxic chemicals on yard waste and on highway grass, then such biomass is a good source for pyrolysis energy conversion. Some DOT's lease highway medians and side areas to growers who grow feed for animals. Not all DOT'S are that smart.

The issue raised by Mary -- cost of transportation -- continues to vex the process. This issue is solved by using a locavore approach, such as the widely dispersed biomass pyrolysis units coupled with widely dispersed Solar Furnace CHP System: http://solarfurnacechp.wetpaint.com

Highway-Hay is the grasses/plants that grow in the thousands of
acres of Rights-Of-Way [ROW] across North America that we PAY
crews to rotary-mow into useless scraps. By sicklebar-mowing,
windrow-raking, and rolling into 3-4' dia x 6' long roundbales,
a crew can truck the bales to a non-alcohol 'grassoline' refin-
ery and make it into 100-102 octane, no-sulphur fuel. Green al-
gae 'scum' that grows on ponds, lakes, swamps, wetlands, can be
'skimmed' [like a swimming pool] using an old firetruck. The algae is taken to a solar 'grower/refiner' plant and made into
green algae bio-diesel/heat for both automotive and heating uses. Both are FREE and 'united' harvester/processor/distribu-
tors deliver 'grassoline' and green algaefuel at a very reasionable cost the the end-customer who purchase it from the
source--not the 'station'! 2-3 stages of resale and markup are
eliminated! With flat-pricing, separate fed. taxes and 'dealer-
dime' to the 'station', add state sales tax on the fuel only
and replace the state excise tax with a [quarterly] 'road-use fee' based upon vehicle weight and distance traveled [starting at 1-cent per mile or .621 cents per Km]...Think about it--fuels for less than $2.00 at the pump. Now buy a $200 HHO-gas
generator to achieve a 35-50% savings of fuel! An 'inside-out'
local/regional plan rather than Big Oil's 'outside-in' world?
Like tobacco, end all advertising of fuels and large overhead
signs with prices ending in '.9' or '9/10' cents! A small
trademark or logo emblem can be shown if the station is actu-
ally owned or operated by that firm--otherwise, the generic
international icon [a fuel nozzle] is shown. Why shud we be
forced to pay for 'propoganda'?..Aaron Allen...

Agreed: There is no magic bullet. Renewable energy takes innovative thinking, careful enginering, capital funding for studies, designs, prototype and construction of the energy plant and distribution system.
Agreed: Small scale energy generating plants need to be local and networked.

Issue: What is the 'best source' of energy? Answer: Solar radiance.

Issue: What system is the best solar energy system? Answer: small scale, concentrated solar power units (CPS).
Issue: Are there any designs for small scale CPS units? Answer: Yes, the Solar Furnace CHP System: http://solarfurnacechp.wetpaint.com.

Issue: Why has not such system been developed to the point of practical application? Answer: Lack of initial funding for prototype development of existing design criteria.

Issue: What efforts have been made to obtain funding? Answer: Our application to EPA which invited such innovated renewable energy solutions, was denied.

Issue: Why was the application denied? Answer: Ostensible reason: There are many CPS systems and the application did not differentiate itself from other CPS systems. Answer to the ostensible reason: The Solar Furnace CHP System is unique and has no direct competition. Real reason: The "locavore" Solar Furnace CHP System threatens the economic interests of the fossil fuel industry and the fossil fuel powered generating and distribution industries.

Issue: Are there alternative methods of raising capital? Anwer: The Small Business Investment Exchange (SBIE) could serve that need. The SBIE would need to be organized and funded. See: Small Business Investment Exchange: http://sbic.wetpaint.com .

Question: What are we waiting for? Answer: At present, people are too risk adverse to invest in any renewable energy project. Either that, or investors are uninformed or ill-informed or are looking only at ROI and not the four bottom lines of SBIE: People, Planet, Profit and Principles.

One thing is clear from this debate - there is NO ONE magic bullet that will provide the answer to 'clean' (what ever that means) fuels to generate electricity. The logical answer will depend on the local availability of a source of energy - solar, wind, biomass, waste to energy, natural gas, or scrubbed coal.
My thoughts are local (50 to 100 MW) plants serving local communities, but tied to the 'grid' to be mutually supporting to each other in case one must be taken off line for maintenance or power outages due to snow, hurricanes or earthquakes. Each plant will be fueled by what is the 'best' source with CO2 (if any) recycled into algae farms to make bio-fuels.
Bottom line - the best choice in Arizona will not be the best choice in Maine.

Scientific observation of Terra Preta indicated that the charcoal, mostly carbon -- stays intact over 7000 years. It does not decay or if it does, it does so over many, many years. Carbon 14 dating can tell the age of old camp fires several thousands of years old.

Furthermore, the millions of 'chambers' in carbon which can be infused with compost tea provides shelter for the bacteria and nutrient. As one Ph.D. remarked, backteria like to sit down to eat.

Agricultural tests of milo maze in Brazil indicated that the net yield increased by a factor of eight as against native soil, when native soil was amended by Terra Preta. Terra Preta is indeed the gift of life from the upper basin Amazonians over 7000 years ago.

The conclusion of my studies of Terra Preta is that the wood is far more valuable when used as Terra Preta than burning to ash for energy genration.

As much as I would like to agree on the use of consumer yard waste and cardboard, these sources typically contain way too much toxic materials to be useful for biomass energy. While I have strong reservations about land fills, still the best use of these sources is the land fill and the methane which can be used.

I realize this thread is about biomass, yet we should always be open to other energy sources. Has anyone taken the time to review the micro solar energy system described at: http://solarfurnacechp.wetpaint.com ? We have to move toward locavore energy and the small scale, widely distributed, solar furnace, which is the best answer, regardless of who invents it.

It is my understanding you have to be careful about high-nitrogen waste like grass and finely ground biomass of some kinds because they can get very hot if aggregated to certain dimensions.

We have so much biomass in Oregon that I think most places that handle it are aware of this.

For those of you who have not heard of the work of Jean Pain in composting woody mass, I highly recommend looking him up. There is a continuing thread on permies.com of guys playing around with his process, making compost, gas, and heat at the same time in different climates, etc.

Jean Pain lived in France, where he was in charge of maintaining forest. He was careful about fire risk and had a lot of biomass he had to do something with, so he came up with a method which he used to fuel his home and his vehicle. He's a bit obscure, but tinkerers often can beguiled by what he did and whether they can make it work for them in their circumstances.

Back to the grass issue, there are some biocides allowed in the U.S. that people should be able to sue over. These are not allowed in some other countries, and they can be very persistent. One has to research carefully to figure out how to remediate where they have been used. I think it would be highly poorly advised to burn anything with biocides. The remediation techniques are sometimes fungal, sometimes bacterial, and sometimes phyto, but it is very important to find the right method to de-tox.

So it sounds like the common grass less the chemicals would be OK. In a suburban environment it would be hard to be sure which grass had chemicals and which did not especially considering over spray, etc.

I would like to also point out that seagrasses have been much maligned for some industrial reasons (herbicide sales, e.g.).

They are efficient at harvesting carbon from the air, they have been used for basket-making and other purposes by First Peoples, and they sometimes shelter endangered creatures some of which have recovered in the Potomac when grasses have been re-allowed.

The demonization of sea grasses in coastal Washington is a great tragedy from which I hope some day there will be recovery.

Current research on sea grasses is assisting a better understanding of how they function in marine ecosystems and how they may be used to re-start some traditional uses.

Many coastal areas are subject to boom and bust and have a great need to even that out with industries other than tourism.

Humans do best to look at harmonizing their needs and existence while diversifying and beautifying their surroundings.

At risk of repeating myself too much, it is the old heat-beat-treat v. the new ask-nature outlook made so famous by Janine Benyus in multiple TED talks.

I look forward to the day when we will be done with huge, exploitive boondoggles and the dependencies they foster.

The reason why the yard trimmings are not good for biomass fuel is that they are typically sprayed with foliant, such as pesticides and toxic industrial fertilizers. These persistent chemicals become airborne when roasted and are clostly to remove. The fuel used to collect the yard waste and haul it to the biomass plant also adds to the cost. When taken to a landfill, at least they create methane which can power a local steam turbine. Benton
County, OR has such a plant.

Welcome to Resource Efficient Agricultural Production - REAP ...
www.reap-canada.com/Research Organization and Consultants:
Creating ecological solutions to energy, fibre and food production challenges through domestic and international ...

I often think it is too bad that ordinary grass seems to be wasted as a bio mass type fuel. One advantage grass has is IT IS ALREADY HARVESTED BY MANY HOMEOWNERS, BUSINESSES, AND MUNICIPALITIES. In my part of the country grass is everywhere and grows spring through fall although the growth rate varies.

There is probably good reason why so many bags of grass end up in landfills in the U. S. (I assume that is what is happening) but it seems like such a waste. Every residential, commercial, and public lawn (including schools), as well as grass growing along side highways is a giant solar collector coveting sunlight, C02, and H20 into biomass which as far as I know is discarded in the U. S.

A nice thing about grass, unlike other waste, is it is well separated and brought to the curb. A bag of grass is nearly 100% grass although it may have some leaves in the mix in the fall. We separately collect paper and non paper recyclables with our weekly trash collection in my area which tends to be very coarsely separated (i. e. broad categories). I wonder if a grass bin could be added to the recycling trucks.

The grass would need to be dried. That may be a good candidate for solar heat since a driver to the growth of grass is sunlight which is of course available in relative abundance when grass is growing the fastest. When the sun is low in the North East in the winter, grass is not growing. Anyway, the next time you 'harvest your lawn' think about what does happen, and could happen to your harvest.

Some of the outdated infrastructure will get turned into urbanite, as permaculturists call broken-up, used concrete, over time.

Some of it will be re-purposed, as hermit crabs re-purpose the shells of larger creatures as they grow. On this count, I think of the pyramids of Egypt and Central and South America. If locals clean these up, they can bait in tourists, for fun and for currency that can be used on the world markets.

I believe the guys suited up in Darth Vader outfits are going to tire of that gig. My guess is it gets uncomfortable in one of those get-ups after a while, and courage against unarmed 84-year olds is not what the viral videos look like.

We will have many cities and towns doing different things, depending on their weather- and their financial-micro-climates.

Though one size will not fit all, keeping win-win micro-projects from going viral is not going to work, over time.

When projects get to a certain size, they are ugly boondoggles--often dangerous and tough to maintain. I don't like big wind, especially big wind with vulnerable and long transmission lines.

People die building these monstrosities. It is seldom reported, or it is a little blip in a local paper--collateral damage.

Small projects where local people, including kids, understand and know how to maintain are where we should be going and where we are going in some places.

If water quality can be maintained and improved, I'm all for that.

In Portland, small and medium-sized businesses are starting to look into what movers and shakers want to do with "infrastructure."

They have figured out that these projects often involve contractors who bring in outside workers and drain the local economy with oversized armatures and skins that have side effects that are hard to fix and left to ratepayers, who are the customers of small and medium-sized local business.

Draining ratepayers is not good for local business or maybe even for oversized business, over time.

Finally, the implementers of some of this are being sued. To do what they have done, city utility moguls have had to violate the city charter. They have had a George Bushish attitude of "so, sue us."

Enough businesses have gotten together to take that bait.

Last night I attended a Portland Permaculture Guild event. The speaker had not been to one of our events before, and was asked if we had business to do before her part. We laughed, and I said that we don't do much business, we are pretty AA-ish.

We pay rent for our meetings with whatever gets put in the re-used yogurt container. I suppose it is sort of socialistic for a libertarian like me, but I adore my informal community, and I am glad it works out.

The speaker was also warned that we are on hippy time. People will come in late--that is just how it works.

Mary, my area of speciality is small & micro hydro. Large dams are national projects and easy to fault. America was built using the power from large dams--Grand Coulee, T.V.A., Boulder, etc. The water they stored nourishes millions of people and acres of agricultural land. Solar may replace some of the power generated but does little for the essential water that people and plants need. I'll match the footprint of hydro vs. that for comparable wind farms any day.

Micro hydro is discrete and can power several homes; removing them from the power grid. Often the power produced is supplemented with PV and small wind---a 10 kwh hydro system costs approx. $3,000; while a comparable wind system costs approx.$20,000 and solar even more. Both wind and solar are intermittent; while hydro is much more reliable and can remain intact for over a century with minor maintenance, while solar and wind will have to be replaced 4x.

Then we have the side benefits of hydro...the fishing habitat of a pond; the filters which can cleanse plastics,invasive species, and silt out of the waterway; better control of flooding and ice; etc.

If you think the dam in Belize is destructive, come up to Maine and I'll take you to the Spruce Mtn wind farm and you can view a 'raped
' mountain top w/ access roads that promote flooding; and huge clear cuts for transmission lines.

"Biomass plants have the potential to yield much higher returns than other renewable sources: a well executed biomass plant can deliver substantially greater economies of scale than wind, and the heat generated from incineration can supply neighbouring buildings, creating another revenue stream."

Hydro plants are the closest Man has come to inventing a perpetual motion energy machine. They last forever, while bio-mass plants are high maintenance, with innumerable pollution,traffic---all those trucks going in and out, and ravage the surrounding countryside for feedstock.

A hydro plant relative to a comparable bio-mass plant, has a very small footprint; and as long as there is gravity and rainfall, can achieve nearly 90% efficiency, almost forever.

Andy, hype is one thing, but don't make me laugh over your preposterous statements.

A well executed fairytail can raise mood and even release endorpins and political cash to many strange and unsustainable ends. Burning refuse or biomass for heat or energy may be a small step up from coal, but I'd put a NIMBY on it. Better to look for ways to eliminate the production of the vast quantities of it in the first place.

"Biomass plants have the potential to yield much higher returns than other renewable sources: a well executed biomass plant can deliver substantially greater economies of scale than wind, and the heat generated from incineration can supply neighbouring buildings, creating another revenue stream."
Andy Cox, energy partner at KPMG (UK)

Thanks for your insight and the reference to ANKUR. My replies follow your comments in quotes.
'Lots of problems with producer gas, tars, carbon monoxide, particulates and power loss:'

The producer gas, as a feedstock, can be rectified into propane, methane, and other gases which burn clean. The tars drop to the bottom of the vessel and become asphalt, just like distilling crude oil. I've gotten many designs by surfing the various patent sites and some of the distillation sites, some quite complex using copper wool. We would use off-the-shelf technology for the producer gas and rectify to mostly methane and propane.

"The gas cannot be stored easily, nor compressed; and as far as I can tell cannot be burned in a Capstone turbine unless the gas is filtered, i.e. the 'ultra clean gas mode'. This reduces the efficiency appreciably." By rectifying the producer gas into propane, butane and methane, we should come close to the standards for natural gas, which itself needs some pre-treatment. The 'biochar' has a greater value than the energy created by pyrolysis-to-electricity.

'ANKUR has widely acclaimed technology and has a large installed base including several at the U. of N. Dakota.' The Ankur process reduces the biomass to ash which becomes as liability of the process. The proper use of the biomass is to reduce the volital gasses in the wood to about 15 -25% and by using the oven, produce charcoal, not ash. The producer gas then is used as feedstock, reduced to propane/mehtane/butane which is used as fuel to the oven. The biochar infused with compost tea has a greater value than the gasses as it will replace toxic chemical industrial fertilizers.

"I strongly suggest anyone who is interested investigate the details at www.ankurscientific.com." The problem I see is that the top loading of raw biomass does not allow for external adjustment of the moisture content whereas by loading the raw biomass into a 'vat' and piping in the flue gas

Lots of problems with producer gas, tars, carbon monoxide, particulates and power loss:

"Theoretically, gasoline and diesel engine operated on producer gas suffer a power loss of 30% and 20 % respectively. In practice, considering a wide range of producer gas quality, a power drop ranging from 25 % to 60 % can be expected when diesel or gasoline engine is run with producer gas "

Several years ago I was convinced that the ANKUR SCIENTIFIC design would be perfect as a portable unit for the Penobscot Nation's forest services. Upon exploration, the permitting problems in the U.S. weren't present in the developing countries installing these units. System startup was done with diesel; and the output temperatures of the gas were quite high.

Their downdraft design is tweaked for a specific feedstock, i.e. cocoa or rice hulls; and tars given off in the pyrolysis zone are drawn through the combustion zone, where they will be broken down or burned. "When this happens, the energy they contain is usefully recovered and the mixture of gases in the exit stream is relatively clean."

Ankur has a lot of installations world wide and seems to be best suited to industrial applications where the gas is burned immediately, i.e. a ceramic tile factory.

The gas cannot be stored easily, nor compressed; and as far as I can tell cannot be burned in a Capstone turbine unless the gas is filtered, i.e. the "ultra clean gas mode". This reduces the efficiency appreciably.

ANKUR has widely acclaimed technology and has a large installed base including several at the U. of N. Dakota.

I strongly suggest anyone who is interested investigate the details at www.ankurscientific.com.

To judge by how popular fire engines are at block parties, I can envision ways you could get dual functions, as we say in permaculture, by taking this to schools, colleges, and universities, now famous for having unemployed graduates.

Practical entertainment/learning, sometimes also called edutainment, has a market niche.

Eugene might have been a better market. I think there is a higher percentage of hippy DIY'ers.

Portland might have been your best play. I haven't visited any yet, but I know there are a number of fab-labbers about.

Also, if you make a movie trailer about the idea, you can stick it up on Kickstarter, to get more input/possible investment. I know at least five people/groups with projects on there.

The pyrolysis unit I have in mind is about 60' long and weighs about 40-60 tons. It consists also of a tub grinder for the raw wood and a fine ginder and mixer for the charcoal and nutrient. It needs to be right near the wood source.

The small mobile unit could be a gas fired genset unit using the production gas which has been fractionated into propane and other gases and the propane compressed. See: http://www.microturbine.com/prodsol/products/

This unit would be mobile and have a bank of zinc-air-oxide batteries as backup and to smooth the match between the load and the Kw production.

I lived in Corvallis for about two years and never got the attention of the Oregon Department of Energy despite my best efforts. The OR DOE has some really dumb folks working for it.

Jim, In Portland, renowned for constant rain, a guy with a mobile PV-unit supplies power to energy-correct bands for outdoor festivals.

Pyrolyis would work here also. It could cut into the yearly loss of firefighters and bio-mass that sometimes happens. Using limb-ups and coppice parallels what some first peoples did, although I doubt they turned it into liquid fuel, other than medicinal tea.

The Oregon Country Fair has been going on yearly for decades. It began when a Republican Oregon governor did not want to preside over police riots. Having come in with connections to rural places, he moved a protest to the country, sort of Woodstock-ish, only far more organized and probably a little less zonked. Many health-food nuts are not into alcohol quite so much.

Less-advantaged places have opportunities to establish some weird, entertaining branding, to entice visitors with some 1% money to 99% places. This is a U.S. pattern going at least as far back as the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

California has garlic, artichoke, and other kinds of bashes, to bait urbs to burbs.

Science experiments go over in certain micro-cultures.

The Body Worlds exhibit, with human bodies donated to be plasticized, appears in many world cities. It is an expensive exhibit to bring, but it earns big money and traffic for our science and industry museum. Volunteering for it (I carried yoga girl around), I met a woman who has traveled to see the different varieties of this exhibit.

Ours was Body and Brain, but there are animal ones as well, although the animals probably did not sign the donation papers.

Places with geeky critical mass have opportunities to showcase new and strange energy/chemistry experiments. We have many urban areas whose hinterlands could probably make your traveling-science work well.

A mobile set-up has great potential to scale up for under-employed handy people and to counter grid sags.

'Also, I have questions about the fuel cost in getting fuel to the plant."

There is a high cost of transportation which militates against a large central plant miles from the source of the wood. The sources are usually wide-spread, requiring many truck round trips.

The best solution is to build several small pyrolysis plants which are on large trailers which can be moved to near the source of the wood, exhaust that source, then move again. After the charcoal is ground, it can be easily transported by trucks to the point of use, such as a farm or industrial plant for use as activated carbon for filter materials.

Electric power is best obtained from converting the Sun's radiant energy to hot vegetable oil, then convering the heat of the oil into electricity and heat for other uses. See: http://solarfurnacechp.wetpaint.com

'Then across the border you have Hydro Quebec ready to deliver terrawatts of clean, green hydro power at about 6 cents/KwH or less.'

There is a Florida Supreme Court Case which prohibited an industrial plant from using electrcity from a neighboring utility -- call 'Wheeling'. The court restricted the industrial plant to buying electricity exclusively from the local utility supplier. I doubt that Berlin or any retailer user could benefit from Hydro Quebec. Maybe the Hydro Quebec electricity could be imported by a wholesaler and then redistributed to the local utility at a hike in price.

Some local areas may be experiencing good growth and greening. That is a good thing, and it is shared with the common atmosphere of the world, which, if my sources are correct, on average, is becoming less and less vegetated and warmer, leaving less topsoil production and protection for the water table. No one walks the earth alone in this regard. This slight global warming puts much more water in the atmosphere, and will change the weather. Exploitive, expansive, economic thought systems must be modified to include world sustainability and support capability. No one has the right to uneeded excess of resources for personal superiority or advantage at others cost or disability.
That is my opinion, and I see no valid reason to change it now.

'Pyrolysis requires a lot of heat to work and needs to be batch fired; and can't use softwood....there is problem with clogging of filters with particulates and there are polluting gases that escape into the atmosphere.'

Once the gas begins to boil from the wood chips, the system is self-sustaining. 'Producer gas' can be compressed and used for the cold start, the same as propane. Pyrolysis can use cardboad, paper, wood chips of any kind. In Ireland they are using giant grasses. The flue gas is 'filtered' by parsing it through the damp wood chips and any left-over is run through a water filter with zero particulate matter escaping.

I have invented the continuous in-feeding process and continuous out-put process for the charcoal.
Jim

MARY...if you check the research findings of the Northern Forest Alliance, you'll find the forests in NYS, VT, NH, MASS, and ME growing at a rate of 2-3% over current usage, thanks to that extra CO2 and a bit of warming.

There is so much extra wood in urban and suburban areas that 'green' waste is used exclusively to fire several biomass plants in the
Berkshires.

Pyrolysis requires a lot of heat to work and needs to be batch fired; and can't use softwood....there is problem with clogging of filters with particulates and there are polluting gases that escape into the atmosphere.

In anaerobic digesters, not only is there a soil conditioner that can be used to restore brown fields to grow bio-mass crops, but liquid fertilizer to increase yields and sell. All gases from a digester are captured and unwanted ones easily scrubbed out, leaving largely methane of pipeline quality.

Bio-gas is a fuel and can far more easily displace fossil fuels than electricity ever will. We are not only planning to generate the gas, but compress it for use in public and private fleets with zero emission's goals. Eventually the gas will be sold to the gas pipeline companies as Sable Island fields dry up.

Several European countries have made these kinds of 'waste to energy' plants a national priority...Ireland and Scotland, for example.

Cutting down trees removes the best way of removing co2 from the atmosphere, seqestering the carbon in wood, and restoring oxygen. Some countries have lost nearly all forest cover to make charcoal, Haiti for example.

Biomass should be 'roasted' and not burned, by using pyrolysis. The resulting charcoal is then ground, then infused with compost tea and used as a soil amendment. The gases driven out of the chipped wood, then supports the combustion needed to drive the oven temperature to operate the oven and pre-treat the wood to 12% moisture content. The burned gas in the flue is piped to a vat in which the wet wood is dried.

Any excess gas not needed to support the oven can be drawn off and made into biodiesel. The biomass is too valuable to use as fuel to be burned to ash in order to create steam to turn a turbine.

The best, most sustainable source of energy is the Sun's radiant energy. The Solar Furnace CHP System [http://solarfurnacechp.wetpaint.com] solves this problem by providing locavore energy, sized to fit the load (and located next to it), such as would be needed by a manufactruing plant, a shopping center or a mid-sized farm with food/fiber/feed processing and production capabilities. We are at the concept stage. See: http://solarfurnacechp.wetpaint.com

Advanced biomass and waste conversion approaches and modern technology can overcomes those tired and weak old objections. Old style biomass burning plants are dirty but not as dirty as old style coal buring plants because they don't pump carbon into the atmosphere but instead work with the natural carbon cycle. Gasification uses the smoke as fuel and can utilize our municipal wastes instead of landfilling it and these plants can back up wind and solar which double the viability of those renewable sources.

I hear the hope, and I understand the good feelings from working together. What concerns me is how this is going to be fed over a long term.

Humans have coppiced and limbed-up for eons in forests, to prevent fire, but I don't see that process as sufficient to fuel something huge over time.

Some of the tree species that grow quickly must be carefully stewarded against wild fire and drought as they grow.

One of my questions is about what species of tree will be used and how forest diversity will be cared for in this plan.

Also, I have questions about the fuel cost in getting fuel to the plant.

There are ways to log selectively, horse-logging as an example, where forest diversity can be maintained, but if this process is designed to be fed by clear-cutting, this poses environmental risk and financial risk as well, because doing this will depend on using those fuels now known as fossil.

I read this with interest, but it triggered questions about the process.

At 75 MW and 10,000 people would be a load of about 5 to 7 KW per person including growth. These are typical loads for the average American oversized home with inefficient use of energy. I would be willing to bet that the majority of this population (in the middle of the forest) are retires and City transients with second homes. 300 years ago the Native Americans would have migrated out if the forest if it did not support their survival. This is just more of the same non sustainable growth of our culture.

Replenishment was a topic and a cost not covered. For example, growing bio-crops that had to be harvested, processed, dried to XX moisture levels. Gets expensive when you consider the costs of reforesting. Loggers aren't exactly extinct; but getting there.

Easier to built an organic waste to bio-gas plant that is omnivorous and disposes/detoxifies sewerage sludge as well as the organic fraction of municipal & industrial/ag. waste--blueberry stems, mixed wood chips from tree trimming operations, etc.

Bio-mass plants are dirty; with ash and gas emissions that need to be scrubbed.

The hardwood market seems to be gravitating to wood pellets for export...they want a RR and cargo port now.

If anyone wants photos of an abandoned bio-mass plant, just e'mail me. I believe the total capacity was 5 MW.

I can appreciate that many cities are feeling the economic pinch for energy production, but also offer thje view that burning trees for electricity generation is definetly NOT renewable energy. It is payment deferred energy, sending the cost for biomass replenishment into future generations while depleting the oxygenation and soil building of the natural cycles we so conveniently interupt for our comfort and profit.

Here in WI the Ute's are proffering the same banner, bragging about the burning of biomass instead of coal and the jobs it supports for the local people. How myopic the people are. In India and Africa, where biomass grows even more quickly than here, many areas have been denuded of green life of any size, and that is just for cooking fuel. not electricity. Water tables become parched out, and soil is depleted of its natural life supporting ability, making it difficult to grow any food, much less cook it.
I know they say there are selective cutting practices employed to take only mature or dying trees out, blah, blah, blah. These are the trees that would normally decay into topsoil.
Burning biomass is a fools short term answer to energy supply. It is not as green as solar energy directly, and because it is supporting jobs in the area, it will not be seen as destructive untill it is too late, too depended upon, and the politicians who back-slapped it into being have been long retired as wealthy carpet-baggers. It may keep the lights on for awhile, but be very aware of the mistake of thinking it renewable, or green, energy.
Does not the sun shine in Berlin, New Hampshire? The smoke stacks may prevent some of it from reaching the ground level for some. I wonder of the air quality in a valley area when a weather inversion occurs.

In Deblois, Maine there is an abandoned biomass plant. I participated in an effort to repurpose this plant as 'waste to energy' plant that regionalized sewerage sludge and organic solid waste collection and converted it into bio-gas---for Maine's fast growing natural gas pipeline.

I was sent 25 MB of consulting reports on the every aspect of the plant, esp. grate, dryer and generator operation and maintenance.

The market dynamics I got from a site visit and a chat with a Maine guide who lived not far away and knew the woods rather well.

The plant is enormous, w/3 large generators and was primarily designed to burn wood and peat from Maine's extensive and renewable peat bogs nearby.

Now looking like a relic of Stalinist Russia; a decade ago was new and shiny.

So what went wrong?

Bio-mass dried up....they 'ate' up all the nearby hardwood and had to go to softwood and this dropped the BTU's down.

With the overall decline in the logging industry, costs of 'mining' feedstock increased. Even worse, good hardwood was being eyed for wood pellet mills.

The agriculture market paid more for peat & could air dry till moist...no diverted heat! So down the road the Peat mining operation is running nicely, while this plant breeds pigeons.

The water supply came from a salmon stream and that was contentious when water was low.

Then across the border you have Hydro Quebec ready to deliver terrawatts of clean, green hydro power at about 6 cents/KwH or less.

And then you have all the wind farms, which as every child now knows, need an 'instant-on', instant-off generating capacity. The last thing biomass plants are, are instant on.

So the grid is quickly building natural gas fired plants which not only provide primary backup, but relatively, clean inexpensive power and can be sited near load...and you wonder why Borolax just sold 4 bio mass plants?

I like the progressive attitude of the people of Berlin NH and would like to make contact with the powers that be there. What I have to discuss is bringing a new industry to the area. What this technology is designed for is repowering towns and cities with biomass. I can be reached at 785-842-1943 if anyone there in Berlin is reading this message. I would especially like the opportunity to discuss this issue with the governor's office.